Finch Fest

Girl Finches Seeking Divorce

Lynn is a tan zebra finch girl who lived with Randy and seemed perfectly happy for quite some time.  Then she changed her mind, seems like.  She began chasing him around the cage.  It was just once or twice now and then at first, but it got worse as days passed.

"Stop it," I'll tell the finches who are chasing and threatening a partner.  They'll both hold still and blink at me while I'm watching for any false move, but quite often go right back to chasing when I turn away.

Randy got fed up with it one day and chased HER.  He was mean about it and bit her, coming up with a beakful of feathers a few times.  I can't stand that level of aggression.  I warned them that I would separate them.

Randy quit chasing.  The next day Lynn chased him again.  I sighed and went to get the "jail" cage.  I filled the food and water dishes of this medium-sized black cage, threw in an eggshell, and set it door to open door with Randy and Lynn's cage. 

"OK, guys.  One of you move.  I don't care which one."  In truth, sometimes when the birds even see another cage come into the room, they'll settle down and be good.  I was up for that result.

They ignored the other cage--and worse yet, they went back to chasing!  You'd think one of them would fly into it by accident in the flitting and flapping, but nooo.  I left the two cages together most of a day, and angled light behind the jail cage to make it attractive.  Finches often move toward light like sweet little daisies.  Not this time.  Apparently I had two stubborn souls here.

The next day I tried again for about an hour and they ignored the other cage again.  Fed up with the whole deal, I opened the back door and put my hand in their cage to encourage someone to move.  My plan was to take Lynn to Lucille's where she could maybe mate with widower Del and provide Lucille's societies some babies to raise.

Did I ever mention how our tan finches seem to fly really fast?  We call them tan rockets.   

I must have tried for a good solid five minutes to get one of them to move into the other cage.  I waved my hand around, tried to block, tried to herd, then tried to catch.  I hate that.  They get upset.  I get upset.  They get tired.  I get tired.  Sometimes it's because they get tired that I can finally get hold of one in a corner, poor thing. 

Suddenly Randy flew into the other cage.  Now to close three cage doors without a bird escaping or him coming back.  It turned into a mess because the door latch on the jail cage embedded itself in the wall of the flight cage and wouldn't come out until I grabbed pliers.  I didn't have enough hands for all this, so my husband came to help.

Phew!  So Randy lived in the jail cage on top of their flight cage for a couple days.  This was just in case Lynn had second thoughts about her dissatisfaction with Randy.  She didn't.  They didn't call for each other all that day.  The next morning he hollered like the males often do when they can't see their mate.  And like the females often do when the males holler like that, she kept her beak buttoned and refused to answer.

Meantime, Lynn acted like she was at a resort and had a grand time bopping all around that big cage all by herself.  No pining away, no calling, no eyeballing him above her.  She was done with him.

So she went to Lucille's--which involved getting her to move out of the flight cage and into a little transporter cage.  Another stubborn, "I won't go, I won't" on her part, but she finally went into the little cage.  As I carried her out of the house to the car, Randy called for her.  She didn't say a word.

And she didn't want any of Lucille's males either for three days.  She tried them all, but fought with them all to one degree or another.  No matter where she was, when Fred would talk, Lynn would answer, so Lucille thought she wanted Fred.  But when she put them together, Lynn argued with him. 

Heated finch discussions look like clashing swords except it's clashing beaks and pecking at each others beaks.  This is natural for our birds and seems to be how they settle differences of opinion. But it didn't seem Lynn was content there, so Lucille told Lynn she could have a cage to herself.  She set it up and held the open doors together.  Lynn was all, "Nope, I won't go," again.

So Lynn and Fred are now living happily together.  Randy didn't call for her from the time she went out of sight.  I have three couples in three cages and three single fellows in three other cages.  And peace.

For about a week.  Now Fay is chasing Squeaks!  He refuses to fight.  He runs from her and makes a short sound over and over like chalk on a blackboard and it sounds so sad.  I think this may be the end of their happy life together too.  I wonder if she wants one of the single guys.  I see she's looking across the room at Andy and Randy's cages.  Hmm.

Intrepid Finch Explorer

Somehow the new flooring papers didn't overlap in Clay's cage the other day.  They just barely met.  Worse yet, when I set the upper cage down into the bottom tray, the paper on the left buckled and popped up at the center about an inch or so above the vinyl-covered tray.  I tried resettling the upper cage and smoothing the paper under the walls, but it persisted in sticking up in an inch-high arch in the center.  I shrugged my shoulders and left it that way.

Clay was delighted.  As I went to go wash out his water dish, he hopped down to investigate this strange floor mound.  I caught a glimpse of him juking his head down to peek beneath the paper.

When I came back with the fresh water, he was doing his usual thing right after getting freshened up--feasting like a starving bird on the new seeds in the red plastic lid on the floor of his cage.  I rehung his water dish, set his cage back on the TV and moved on to the next of the six cages, thinking no more about Clay's warped flooring.

I had to laugh when it came cage-cleaning time the next day.  The paper was humped up twice as high because Clay was beneath it, as happy as a kid in a blanket "fort."  He went in and out as if to show me what a wonderful place he'd discovered.  The paper's edge ruffled the feathers on his head and back as he passed beneath it--what's left of those feathers, that is.  The back of his head and neck are still bald from the last time his long-deceased mate yanked them out.

"You've been playing under there, eh?" I said, amused at the bald old man finch playing like a kid.  I peeked under to see if he'd furnished the new hidey-hole with yarn, but he hadn't.  There was enough poop to show he'd spent much of the day under that arch.  I wish I'd seen him sitting all pleased with himself and thinking happy thoughts about his nifty new hang-out.

Maybe from time to time I can fold paper into a cube somehow and set it on his floor as a toy for him?  Or make a roll of paper, like a toilet paper tube only bigger so there's room for a curious finch to go inside.  If I set that on his floor, he might play with it.  Yeah.

Murdered Finch Babies

One day Lucille walked into the birdroom and found a dead baby zebra finch on the floor.  It looked about two days old.  She was shocked and horrified.  She didn't even know any birds were sitting on eggs, so whose baby was this?  How on earth did it get so far away from any of the cages?

Then she noticed another one on the floor a couple feet away from the first one.  It looked only a day old.  Her mind reeled.  How could this have happened?  We'd never had babies out on the birdroom floor before.  If they fell out of the nest or were pushed, they landed on the cage floor, no further.

She watched all the birds, looking for some sign of worry or distress to point out who the parents were.  There was no indication at all. 

In the following weeks, she thought and thought how babies could have gotten on the floor and decided it had to be the society finches.  They'd sat on eggs many times that never hatched and societies are known for loving to be foster parents.  Maybe they'd tried to steal and raise the babies?  Societies are slightly bigger than zebras so maybe they could lift and carry babies.  Our zebras never do.

It seemed a horrible mystery we'd never solve.  A couple weeks later she noticed Del and Sue were sitting on eggs.  This was the only couple that weren't related to each other, so she let them keep their eggs.  Maybe these babies would help make up for the lost ones, and maybe the babies would be girls.  We needed girls.  Somehow we had bachelors galore.

Del and Sue subsequently hatched three babies in three days and everything was fine.  Lucille got up to go into the bathroom, but took a look at the babies first, checking to see if their food sacs were full because she wasn't sure she could trust young Sue to be a good parent. 

When she came back a couple minutes later, she found two babies on the floor--dead!  Just like the other time!  And the other baby went missing within twenty minutes and turned up dead in a dish in a cage on the other side of the room!

Lucille realized this had to be deliberate murder.  Del and Sue were baby killers.  When we had babies fall or get tossed out of a nest before, they were usually still alive and well and could be put back and grow up.  These were dead within a couple moments.

And it definitely wasn't the societies at all; they still sat in their nests quiet as mice. 

Del had raised babies successfully when he was Dot's mate.  So was this young Sue's idea of parenting?  And he went along with it?  Or what?

Within two weeks of this second killing, Sue up and died.  This makes us wonder if she'd felt unwell and knew she couldn't have finished raising any babies.  She'd seemed fine. We'll never know.